Prince Kung to James Burrill Angell, August 14, 1881
Prince Kung to Mr. Angell.
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s letter concerning the telegraph question, in which you ask a few farther questions on certain points wherein this business is of the greatest importance to your government.
In answer to your first inquiry, viz, “Since the viceroy replies that my copy of the second article of the agreement is incorrect, may I ask you to furnish me with a copy of the agreement?” We send herewith for your inspection a copy of the second article of the company’s petition.
2d. These general rules have been sanctioned by the viceroy Li in compliance with the petition of the Great Northern Telegraph Company.
Your third question is, “I gather from the purport of your communication that an American company, notwithstanding the arrangement of the Chinese Government with the Northern Telegraph Company, will be allowed to lay a cable when it chooses, directly from America, or from the Sandwich Islands to China. I beg you to say clearly if this is your meaning.”
In answer we have to say, if hereafter an American company proposes to lay a cable from America to China, as this is a different route (from those of the Great Northern Telegraph Company), a compromise can be made.
Again you ask “* * * if this is an assurance, may I ask what is the nature of the arrangement?” As your country does not propose just now to lay a cable, we have nothing on which to propose a mode of arrangement. But, as we have distinctly stated in our former letter that there is no intention to cause disappointment to an American company, therefore when the time comes a satisfactory arrangement can certainly be reached after consultation.
Finally you ask, “If unhappily the viceroy Li should die, is his successor held to the same promise?” We cannot help saying this is being too particular. In all questions of intercourse between China and foreign countries, it is the propriety or otherwise of a question that is considered, without reference to whether the official who originally deliberated the question be in office or be succeeded by some one else.
We send this special reply with compliments.